#chapter Seven
Whoever had set up Luvfinder must’ve been a huge fan of Monty Python, Maura thought as she sorted through her email notifications. Seven winks, eight nudges. Too bad there was nary an Eric Idle or John Cleese in the bunch.
Not that the selection was terrible. She’d made her parameters pretty narrow, wary of the dating site’s claim to have a “ninety-eight percent match rate!” As far as she could see, anyone who waded through the ten page questionnaire and made it to the end without stabbing anyone already deserved at least one date.
So far, she’d been on thirty-seven.
“It’s serious business,” she told Shelly as they settled into their favorite booth, the one toward the back so they could people watch. “I have a spreadsheet.”
Shelly snorted laughter. “Oh. My. God. No, Maura. No, you can’t.”
“I do.” Maura nodded and held up a finger. “Color coded.”
“Sweetie, this is supposed to be fun. Not like studying for the bar.”
Maura shrugged. “I’m trying to maximize my membership, that’s all. I only paid for the three-month intro package. After that it’s a staggering twenty-nine ninety-five a month unless I want to commit to six more months. And honestly, kind of like losing twenty pounds, if I haven’t managed to get a good start in three months, I’m probably not gonna.”
Shelly shook her head and stirred some sweetener into her coffee. She had a fruit cup in front of her, but eyed Maura’s thick slab of chocolate cake with unabashed lust. “If you keep eating that sort of thing, you’re not going to lose twenty pounds.”
“I listed my body type as curvy.” Maura stabbed the cake with her fork and took a bite, savoring the fudgy icing. “God. So good.”
“Have you heard from him?” Shelly sounded hesitant, almost afraid to ask.
“Nope.” Maura stabbed her cake again, but didn’t take the second bite. The first had been so good she was afraid to ruin it by overindulging. She’d learned a lesson about that, hadn’t she? Something about leaving while the party was still fun.
“Have you called him?”
“Nope.”
“…Texted?” Maura smiled and shook her head. Shelly sighed. She reached across the table and took a chunk of Maura’s cake with her own fork. “Are you going to?”
“Oh, yes. Definitely. I just wanted to be sure I had something to tell him when I did, that’s all. That’s part of the deal.” Maura sipped her own coffee, relishing the warmth of the mug in her hands. Outside, the leaves were changing early, predicting a terrible winter. It had been two agonizingly long weeks since she’d spoken to Ian. Every day when she woke, she figured she might finally stop missing him. So far it hadn’t happened.
“Do you have something to tell him yet?”
The best part of having a best friend was being able to tell her all your secrets. Maura grinned, but said nothing. The other best part was being able to tease her with them.
“Bitch.” Shelly shook her head. “C’mon. You know I have to live vicariously through you. I want details. I mean, if you’re keeping a frigging spreadsheet…”
Maura laughed. “I have to or else I’ll never keep it all straight. For example, Saturday, I met Matt in the morning for coffee. I had lunch at the Taj Mahal with Jordan. He’s an investment banker. I’m not sure why I thought that’s why he’d pick up the tab for the four-ninety-nine buffet, but nope. He fully supports women taking the lead in a relationship, which apparently included not only me covering my own bill — which I’m fine with, by the way. But also paying for his. Also would’ve been fine, I guess, if it hadn’t been our first date, and if he hadn’t been the one to be so insistent about it. I’d already turned him down a couple times before I gave in. The food was good, though.”
“Yikes!” Shelly said, too loud, then giggled. “Wow.”
“Yep.” Maura nodded. “Dinner that night with Robert, a total sweetheart with two kids under ten. So. No to that.”
Shelly wrinkled her nose. She had teenagers, and that was as close to kids as Maura’d ever come. “Hmmm.”
“Drinks later that night with…hmm. I’d have to check the spreadsheet. It was either Bill or Brad. Either way, he met me at some jazz club. I wanted to poke my eardrums out before I finished my first martini. It was an early night.” Maura leaned back in the booth. “Sunday, I got up early and went to the flea market with Jacob. He’s got grandkids. Somehow that bothers me less than Robert having young children. Does that make me weird?”
“Wait a minute. Hold on. All of that in one weekend?”
“Yep. And,” Maura leaned closer to say in a triumphant half-whisper, “You’ll never guess who looked me up on Connex and asked me out. I mean, like out on a date, out.”
“Norman Reedus!” Shelly’s shout turned heads.
Maura guffawed. “Don’t I wish? That’s a Do Not Pass Go, Go Directly to Bed situation, right there. No, it’s someone real, actually. Daniel.”
Daniel Petruzzi, six-foot-three, blond hair, brown eyes. Wide, friendly smile and a habit of tilting his head to one side when you talked to him. Hands that could palm a basketball. Fingers that could make a girl lose her mind.
“No.” Shelly looked stunned. Then both brows went up. “You said yes, didn’t you?”
“Of course I said yes. I haven’t seen Daniel in what…eighteen years?” Maura paused, thinking of that long-ago hot summer when she and Daniel had nearly eaten each other alive. “There’s something about your first real sexual relationship, you know? The one where you stop fumbling around and start to get it right. At the very least, I want to see how he looks in real life, not just in his Connex profile picture. Which looks pretty damned good, if you must know.”
“And he just happened to get in touch with you now? Now after all this time? What a strange and happy happenstance.” Shelly’s brows waggled.
Maura laughed, heat tinging her cheeks. “He friended me a few years ago, but we never messaged or anything. He was out of the country for a while. He…um…well, he said he saw my changed relationship status.”
“And he asked you out on a date. Woo hoo!” Shelly made guns of her fingers. “Pow, pow! Take that, Ian dingleberry.”
Maura laughed so loud she clapped a hand over her mouth. More heat flooded her, a little guilty this time. “Don’t call him that.”
“Well,” Shelly said. “That’s what he is.”
Shelly wasn’t wrong, which was both hilarious and sad. More doublethink. Maura shrugged.
“I’m having dinner with Daniel Saturday night. Tonight, I’m meeting James at the gym for a complimentary weight training session. On a Friday night. I think that tells you how well it’s going to go. I’ve got a plan to meet someone for drinks later. Can’t remember who, but it might be a second date. I’ll have to check my spreadsheet.”
“You’re going to burn out!”
Maura shrugged again. “I told you. Serious business.”
“Why, sweetie?” Shelly frowned. “Why does it have to be so serious?”
“Because.” Maura thought hard about what to say for the rest of her answer, but that was the best she could come up with.
The conversation turned to other things, which was something of a relief. They hugged in the parking lot, and Shelly squeezed her hard. When she pulled away, she searched Maura’s face with her gaze.
“Call him,” Shelly said. “You want to.”
“Of course I want to. I want to every day.” Maura’s mouth twisted. “I’m crazy about that kid.”
Shelly laughed and rolled her eyes. “So. Call him. Or at least text him.”
“I can’t. Not yet. All I’ve done is go on lame dates with people I have no interest in seeing again.”
“Isn’t that kind of the point you want to make to him?” Shelly pulled her jacket closer around her neck and looked up at the gray sky with a shiver. “That you don’t really want anyone else?”
It was the point, but it hadn’t quite been made yet. Maura knew him too well to believe that a few coffee dates and some funny stories equalled what Ian thought she needed. “I haven’t even tongue-kissed any of them yet, much less had rampant, wild sex.”
Shelly made a face. “Are you really going to sleep with someone else just to prove your point?”
“Maybe.” Maura lifted her chin. “Why not? I’m a woman empowered by her own sexuality, ready to take control of my passion. If I want to go out and get laid, why shouldn’t I?”
Shelly didn’t say anything.
Maura sighed.